I spent some time yesterday afternoon talking with Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious, about everything from her weeknight dinners to the cookbook she's releasing this fall. It was an honor to speak with Ms. Steel, who has written for Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, and appeared on numerous TV programs, including the Today Show (the list goes on). After our conversation, I can absolutely see her energy and enthusiasm in the pages of Epicurious. Talk about a foodie!

I've noticed a lot of changes on Epicurious in the past year or so – new blogs and features. What's the idea behind this new content?
I came to Epicurious in July 2005, and I found a site that I loved with tremendous depth, but not a lot of breadth. We needed to broaden out the site to make it the go-to site for people who love to eat and love cooking and love food. I knew that we had a fantastic recipe database, so we added restaurant coverage, a huge thing on drinks. We added video, and a blog that I started – for a while I was the only one writing. We spent some time not only broadening our coverage and trying to get notable names on the site, but we also took a look at the site, which was over 12 years old, and we realized it was time to make it look as rich and interesting as the content. We spent a good part of last year looking at the inner plumbing of the site, and we launched [the redesign] last September. I've never worked so hard, and it was incredibly rewarding to create a food site from the ground up. I thought, "What would I like? What kind of site would I like and how would I create it? We are still rolling out features throughout this year. There are going to be upgrades and additions this year and next.

Any chance you can give us some hints about these upcoming features?
One of the things that we are going to be doing is expanding our community section. We have always had a vibrant, passionate community of people – up to six million unique [visitors] in December. They love to talk to each other. We have ten forums, and realize this is something to increase. We made a deal with Facebook, and realize that a lot of people would love to have more social networking on our site. We are blowing out something called "My Epicurious" – people will be able to upload a photo of themselves, they can already tag interests. They will be able to upload pictures so people can see what they are cooking now. They will be able to join interest groups. For example, if they are interested in it cuisines, they will be able to see everything having to do with that interest group, like new Italian recipes and posts, anything to do with Italy.



How do you go about finding recipes that aren't from Bon Appetit and Gourmet?
We have about 26,000 recipes on the site now. Two-thirds are from our magazine partners and a third are from cookbooks that we editors love and from chefs, and they are created especially for Epicurious. They're created for special holidays, or I realize that we don't have a classic roast chicken recipe, so we have someone do that. I was recently out in San Francisco, and we shot a bunch of videos out there with famous chefs. I became obsessed with making butter, and chef Dan Patterson showed me how to do it – it's the easiest thing in the world. So the recipes come from a myriad of different ways. We are either asking people to devise recipes especially for Epicurious or we are finding recipes we love and using those on our site. We also have 35,000 recipes from members, but those are not tested.

Do you cook frequently yourself?
I do. I have twins that just turned ten, and I commute every day to and from the city, and I rush home and like every classic, clichéd mom, I pull out whatever I have in the fridge and cook whatever I have in 15 minutes. I do cook most nights, but it is usually short-order cooking. On the weekends, I tend to do things that are more leisurely. I'll make bread or butter or a chocolate layer cake or gelato – something that takes more time or effort. I'm also releasing a book this fall, Real Food for Healthy Kids. We tested over 400 recipes, over 200 of which are in the book. That was good practice for me, since I've cooked things that I never cooked before in my life.

What's your favorite Epicurious recipe?
I have to admit that my favorite is the most popular on the site. I have a real obsession and addiction to chocolate. I have a physical need. I probably have not gone a day without in 30 years and I am not exaggerating. There is a chocolate layer cake on the site that has over 1000 comments and four forks, which is our highest rating. It's a simple chocolate layer cake: moist, neither sweet nor bitter. It's a very easy cake to make. Chocolate layer cake is the thing that I most obsess about when thinking about food.

Have you ever had a bad cooking experience with a highly-rated recipe?
I did make a roast beef from the site that is highly recommended and I completely screwed up. I added way too much chili powder and it was almost inedible because it was too spicy. I think I was being spacey that day, or the kids were driving me crazy probably.

I've always wondered, how do you decide whether a recipe is healthy enough to get a broccoli next to it?
There are several ways – if it is from Gourmet or Bon Appetit and they say it is healthy, we will tag it as such. We realize that people are interested in finding out the nutritional analysis, so we started something called "Healthy Dinner Tonight," which is an RSS feed – one recipe that you get in your reader or email box. It's with our sister site, Nutrition Data, and they break it down and figure out whether it is low-fat or low-calorie. We think that an increasing number of people coming to our site are interested in this. Likewise with vegetarian and vegan recipes. We've done a series with Moby, a musician who is a vegan. He takes us into our kitchen and makes us vegan pancakes.

So does Nutrition Data analyze all of your recipes?
They do it for ones that we ask them to do for that particular feed. Eventually, every recipe will have a nutritional analysis. We also do a lot of spa recipes, so they give us fantastic spa recipes that always have nutritional analysis.

Do all of your food photos come directly from the magazines, or do you have labs and kitchens where you cook and photograph?
It depends. If they are Gourmet and Bon Appetit recipes, then they are attached, but we do a lot of photos on our own, especially with recipes that we get created for Epicurious. All of those are tested as well. We have a team of great recipe testers and developers. We do testing and photos for our own exclusive recipes.

You used to work at fashion and other magazines, why did you decide to transition to food?
I was a failed model, way too short. Maybe not too short now, but in 1980 5' 7 1/2 was too short. I worked at Mademoiselle, and wrote a beauty column right out of college. But I realized that as much as I love clothes and lipstick, I love to eat way more. Eating and food is a real bridge between cultures. If someone doesn't like food, I find them somewhat suspect. People who don't live to eat, I don't really get it. It became an obvious thing for me to move into. I worked during college all year, and would take the summers and travel around Europe with boyfriends or girlfriends, and I'd spend all my money on decent restaurants. I would also say that my mother (god love her) is the worst cook in the world. She makes the best tea and coffee you've had in your life, but at seven-years-old, I started to watch Julia Child and probably by ten, I was cooking a lot of meals. It I was out of survival instinct that I learned how to cook in the first place. I wrote for Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times. Food has been my life for a long time.

Can you run us through famous foodies and chefs that you've met?
I'm now 44-years-old, I've been in publishing since I was 21. One of the thrills of my life was meeting Julia Child. She was way taller than I expected; she's actually a very tall woman. There are a lot of chefs that I have tremendous respect for. I'm careful not to be best friends with any chefs because I am cognizant of the fact that I am covering them and a journalist first and foremost. One that I have real respect for is Dan Barber at Blue Hill. I have tremendous respect about what he is trying do, and the concept of connecting the farm to the table in a way that almost no one else in America is doing. Tremendous numbers of chefs I've that met are very high on themselves, and think they are the cat's meow, and very much playboys. That's always very funny to me, that the culture supports that and some of them do live that way. All in all, I have to say that having witnessed the beauty industry and moving into the food world, chefs are some of the most generous and hospitable people I've ever met in my life – warm and loving people.

It's Tuesday night and you just don't feel like putting a meal together, where do you go?
Something I do once a week on Sunday night is I make different food for the week. So one of the things I do is pull out some of that cooked pasta – I always make pasta – and frozen pesto, which I always have in my freezer. That would be the fast and fresh food that I would eat.

You mentioned earlier that you have a book coming out this fall, is it just about recipes to make for kids?
When I set out to write it, I wanted to make a Joy of Cooking for parents. There is major introduction with everything from how much calories and protein and carbs each child should have at different ages, to how to deal with picky eaters, to how to make a menu. We reviewed over 200 recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with icons to denote the time it takes and which to make with kids. Every recipe has been tasted by a child, and some have quotes underneath with the child's reaction. Every recipe has been nutritionally analyzed, so you can decide whether it makes sense for you to serve that you your child, since a third of children in this country are overweight and another third are underweight. It's unlike any book that's ever been done for parents. We spent over four years creating it – we created all the recipes ourselves. There's a chapter on first foods for babies and toddlers, with instructions on what you can give them. It's perfect for kids 6 months to teenagers. I think we've covered every occasion and possible type of meal.

Any more publications planned for after the release?
We are talking about other books and TV possibilities in connection to the book, but nothing is set it stone.

Other than Epicurious, what food sites and blogs do you read?
I do look at Slashfood, the food section, Serious Eats. I really try to keep current in terms of national exposure, so I look at Hungry Magazine in Chicago, the San Francisco Choronicle blog, I look at Bruni's blog. Gastropoda is always fun to read. Then I try to do things like look at the Huffington Post and look at sources that may not be related to food but are about general culture, since that will often spark an idea.

And what's your most frequented cookbook?
By far my favorite is Julia Child's book, The Way to Cook, where I learned to bake bread and classic things like cassoulet. She demystified it, explaining things like why you need to heat a pan with oil before adding protein. It's been a great cooking tool for me.

I always wonder -- does looking at food all day make you sick of it, or just hungry all the time?
You know sometimes I do reach a saturation point. If I have been on a business trip and been from one restaurant to the next, I crave coming home and having sautéed spinach and a bowl of cereal. But generally, I love thinking about food and writing about food, which means that I do love eating food too. What it has taught me is the importance of moderation. I think that you should have your cake and eat it too, because you want the cake. But you want the steak frites before the cake, so I am careful that when I eat, I eat in small bits and don't go overboard.

What is the best food city in the world?
New York City, by far. Chicago is a fascinating restaurant town and San Francisco – I love the food culture there. But New York is by far the best restaurant and eating city in the world, and I've traveled all over so I feel like I can say this with experience. You can go from Armenian food to food from Uzbekistan, and not only is there food, there but it's good. I think that probably the best place in New York City to eat is Queens, by far. You can just go from country to country on one block and not be broke by the end of the night, just sample different dishes from different cuisines. I think Queens is like the last melting pot left. I love hopping on the train and going to different holes in the wall in Queens.

Any advice for aspiring food writers and foodies?
My advice is always pretty much the same, whether they want to get into food writing or journalism. First of all, make sure that you are passionate about your subject matter because if you are not, your job will quickly become drudgery. And if you are a food writer, it is fantastic to specialize in something, and something that is more on the cutting edge. For instance, there are a million food writers who specialize in Italian cuisines, whereas there are fewer food writers out there, particularly English writers, who can really demystify Japanese cuisine for me. When I think of cuisines like Greek, Japanese, Thai, I only think of one or two names in each area that I would go to. I would say write all the time and become familiar with a cuisine less traveled than others and cook it, because you need to be experienced. And I would say blog away because it is a good way for editors to judge your writing skills and your knowledge.